Posted on

A Misleading Sign on the Road to Writertown

A few weeks ago, I noticed a brief trend sweep through the writers’ blogosphere (do you hate that word? I kinda do) about the proper time to label oneself a “writer.”

Some proposed calling oneself a writer to empower the act of writing. Some advised writing and then applying the label. Everyone seemed to agree with Stephen King’s pithy maxim “if you’re a writer, you write.” Which is great, because if someone came out in favor of calling oneself a writer without ever writing, well, I’d have to put that on the big list of good ideas with the Ford Pinto, DIVX, and the CueCat.

I didn’t sound off at the time, because I’m a big fan of busting out my opinions long after everyone has stopped caring. But as far as I’m concerned, where and when you choose to label yourself doesn’t matter. Not even a little.

Now, when I say this, I’m not talking about “writer” as a description of one’s profession. If you’re already a writer by profession, you don’t need to worry about this question. In fact, you can take the rest of the day off. You’re welcome. Drink one for me, buddy.

However, if you’re a starting writer still wrestling with your first draft, or just staring at the blank page in despair because you can’t resolve this burning and clearly super-important existential question — maybe I can help.

What does “being a writer” mean? Whatever you want. As long as you put words on the page. If you’re not putting words on the page, it means exactly nothing, regardless of how much imaginary weight you give it.

Think of it this way. If you’re on the road to Writertown, and words are your fuel, then the “writer” label is a road sign. You can place that sign anywhere you like. Put it at the beginning of the journey to point the way. Put it in the middle to keep you on track. Put it at the other end of Writertown and gaze lovingly at it only after you’ve made it through.

But the sign doesn’t mean anything by itself. If you never get on the road, it doesn’t matter where the sign goes. You can call yourself a writer all day long, if it gets words on the page. If it doesn’t, then it’s about as meaningless as labels get (and they tend to be pretty meaningless anyway).

On the other hand, if you think that “writer” is something genetic or inherent or vague or luck-based that you have to somehow earn before you can write something — stop thinking that. Just write and stop creating artificial barriers for yourself. You’ll have plenty of real ones to deal with soon enough, believe me.

If the label “writer” puts some nitrous in your metaphorical engine, then go for it. If it motivates you to carry that road sign in your car while you travel, super. Do that. But if it’s holding you back, or keeping you down, or preventing you from putting words on the page in any way — chuck it out the window and don’t look back.

Just write, and let the labels take care of themselves.

Posted on

Surly Questions: Tristan J. Tarwater

When Tracy McCusker from Dusty Journal first heard of Tristan J. Tarwater, she said: “That is the best name for a writer EVER!” And it pretty much is. Tristan is the author of Thieves at Heart and the upcoming Self-Made Scoundrel, the first two books in the Valley of Ten Crescents series. Thanks for the great interview, Tristan!

1. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Oh wow. At the risk of sounding cliched, when I was very young. I wrote my first book when I was 7; it was about my brother. I learned to read pretty early on and loved reading and as I got older wanted to do the same thing. Write stories, create worlds. The prospect was very exciting as a child and it still is.

2. What is the meaning behind the phrase “back that elf up”?

Back That Elf Up is a pun; when I first started writing the stories of Tavera and the Ten Crescents I was still used to saving things on disks and those disks inevitably getting corrupted or just flat out destroyed. The netbook I was writing on at the time didn’t even had a disk drive and I was worried about my computer dying so at the suggestion of my Admin (and spouse) I posted all the stories on an invite-only blog to archive them. I figured, Blogger isn’t going anywhere. My computer could get hit by lightning. So they were ‘backed up.’ The elf part is kind of obvious. I’m obsessed with elves, probably from a very early exposure to Zelda when I was younger. This blog was called ‘Back That Elf Up’ to reflect the nature of the thing and when we had to think of a name for the official site I thought, ‘well, this is easy to remember.’ And it is more related to ‘backing up’ other writers and creators, supporting them. So basically, it’s a lot of things.

3. Supporting other indie authors seems very important to you. What do you do to support your fellow indie authors, and what has been your greatest source of support?

I think the biggest support I have been given and have been able to give is advice from other authors. Connecting people however I can and sharing my experiences. Being indie means you can sometimes feel overwhelmed trying to navigate the waters of publishing, trying to find an editor, a cover, where to print, etc. and getting a bit grounded and being pointed in one direction can save you a lot of brain flails. My greatest source of support has been my spouse who has encouraged me to write and celebrated with me every step of the way. My friend Nathan who has read ALL the beta and is probably the only person who knows how Ten Crescents ends. MeiLin Miranda who told me that I could be better, which was kind of a lifesaver. And my editor, Annetta Ribken who is just fabulous.

4. What’s the best piece of writing advice you ever received?

Hmm, it’s a toss up between ‘Just keep writing’ and ‘Get an editor.’ If you don’t keep writing, you’ll have nothing to edit and you’ll never get better. But editing is important. Another brain needs to take it in and let you know what’s up, to put it lightly.

5. You were born and raised in New York City. What sensibilities, if any, have your surroundings brought to the Valley of Ten Crescents series?

When people find out that I grew up in NYC the reaction I generally get is ‘Man, it’s so busy! How did you deal with all those people?’ And people fail to realize that it’s very easy to keep to yourself, to get lost in a sea of people and be alone with your own thoughts. With that many people and neighborhoods, it’s very easy for enclaves of people to follow their own rules, set up their own norms. It’s a place where a lot of people can believe very different things and live very different lives adjacent to one another. Yet with all the dissonance, things keep going.

6. What are the most formative books in your personal library?

Probably the Crystal Cave series by Mary Stewart. I read that as a young person and to this day, I still don’t think of it as fantasy? It takes Merlin who damn near everyone knows about and turned him into a person, which I thought was awesome. It shows the power of time and story by giving accounts of how things really happened as opposed to the flash and bang of myths. I must have read that book so many times. I kind of have a bit of an investment in Arthurian Legend, given my name and all.

7. Tavera, the main character of Ten Crescents, apparently started as a character in a role-playing game. How has she evolved in her transition into prose?

Well initially I heard we were going to play a game so I thought, ‘What would be fun to play? Okay, a rogue, make her a half-elf. One of her ears is cut.” Then you get your stats and try to fit them to the character, trying to think of back story to have the numbers make sense. At some point they diverged because well, characters in books don’t have stats. Their limitations and abilities aren’t numerical. The back story gave her more history than was necessary to kill things and her journey is definitely more emotional than in the campaign. Especially because the party died in a TPK. HA!

8. Who is the titular “Self-Made Scoundrel” of the second Ten Crescents book, and what’s behind the title?

Tavera’s adopted father, Derk, is the Self-Made Scoundrel. It’s a prequel to Thieves at Heart and talks about how Derk goes from being Dershik, the son of a Baron to the man who kidnaps Tavera at the beginning of Thieves at Heart. Like Tavera he spent his childhood at the mercy of other people but starts his story in a very different place. He has help along the way to scoundrelhood but unlike Tavera, he gets it much later on in life and he has his own weaknesses and strengths to work with.

9. Who does your cover art for Ten Crescents?

Amy Clare Learmonth aka Ruby Saturna does my covers and she is just fabulous. I found her on Twitter and I really dig her style, in addition to her just being a great person in general. She actually does a lot of awesome cyberpunk illustration. She’s in DeviantArt as well.

10. What has been the biggest challenge in writing and self-publishing the Ten Crescents series?

Getting attention is very difficult. Especially for myself and my personality. Believe it or not I’m pretty introverted and publicizing the book and the series has been really hard. Getting people to review and take you seriously after all the work you’ve put in is hard. I’m glad I have help from my Admin and for the internet. It’s made getting info about what we’re about and about Tavera way easier.

11. What songs are in your writing soundtrack?

I find that I write best in silence for the most part to be honest. But sometimes when I need to get my brain in a good spot I listen to PJ Harvey (Uh Huh Her) or The Black Heart Procession (anything but the 3rd album). I was listening to a lot of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Lyre of Orpheus and Abattoir Blues specifically) when I first started writing the series so I listen to that as well. And Blonde Redhead is another good one. Kind of moody, stuck in your brain kind of tuned I suppose, heh.

12. What are your top five “desert island” books?

Wow, well. Haroun and the Sea of Stories would have to go on their. It’s one of my favorite books. An illustrated William Blake anthology because I love how he combined his poems and art. It’s just glorious and he himself is such an interesting person. I would bring Sky Doll which is technically a comic by Barbara Cenepa and Alessandro Barbucci because it’s such a killer story with great art as well. I love the mixture of religion, faith, sex, technology. It has a lot. Principia Discordia. And the complete works of HP Lovecraft because I love his writing style and when you’re on a desert island surrounded by the ocean, you need to be totally freaked out by Cthulhu.

Posted on

I Always Wanted to Be… a Lumberjack!

A blog post by Rebekah Loper, entitled “If You Couldn’t Write…” got me thinking about what would happen if I really, actually couldn’t write.

The heart of Rebekah’s question is really about secondary passions — about how we would fill the time if some mysterious outside force denied us our writing gift. The question itself has some pretty easy workarounds. Gone blind? Record some audio for transcription. Lose both hands? Get prosthetics, or fall back on audio again. So you’ve been stabbed with an icepick behind the earlobe and have a level of brain activity roughly equivalent to a bottle of Flintstone vitamins? Yeah, your writing days are probably over. But you’ve probably got bigger problems anyway, such as bedsores and routinely soiling yourself. Something plenty of writers are well-acquainted with anyway, am I right? High five!

In my experience, the biggest cause of writers not writing is not unhappy accident or cosmic malice, but writers themselves. We’ll come up with any reason not to write, including concocting fanciful scenarios about no longer being able to, especially in the wee hours when that unedited manuscript japes and mocks us like some unholy psychopomp.

But really, this scenario barely exists in life. Helen Keller wrote twelve books, and she was blind, deaf, and born without speech. Of course, the question doesn’t play as well if you frame it as “well, what if your name was Lazy Q. Lazerton from Lazytown, Louisiana and you didn’t write anything because you were a huge bum and spent all day watching Charmed?” Also, if you really couldn’t write, you’d have serious problems just living day-to-day, much less prospering in some other field, because modern life involves signing a lot of legal documents.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t intend this as a criticism of Rebekah by any means. But this question does seem to occur to writers with alarming frequency. That may just be my perception, but it does seem like writers are particularly prone to this hypothetical scenario.

For example, I don’t see people interview Olympic figure skaters and ask “so, say both your legs were shattered like a pair of sausages filled with peanut brittle that someone whaled against the back wall of a Stuckey’s for ten minutes. What would you do?” Probably Kurt Loder never asked Rick Allen, the drummer from Def Leppard, “so, what are you going to do if that other arm comes off? Like, some guy shoots meth into both eyeballs with turkey basters and comes at you with an industrial sander and wears that arm down to a shiny nub? What then, smart guy?”

The cynical part of me wonders if the question doesn’t sometimes spring from a sublimated insecurity: the thought that maybe our time might be better-spent — that we’re often tempted to just hang it up and get a straight job. I have no proof of this. I just know writers can be a fragile lot at times. I say this as some who has actually set his own writings on fire, so believe me when I tell you I’m not projecting.

The “what if you couldn’t write” question is, for me, an oblique way of saying “well, what if your life were totally horrifying?” I’m a storyteller by nature. I have to tell stories. I’ve been known to edit the truth[1] from time to time, not to obfuscate facts or deceive others, but to enhance dramatic symmetry. When I’m not writing, I’m reading. When I’m not reading, I’m playing role-playing games and telling stories that way. When I’m not doing that, I’m watching movies or television and picking them apart. Stories are my life. If I could truly eat, live and breathe stories, then I’d pretty much be Mr. Creosote.

So if someone came along and took that away from me, it’s hard to imagine what I’d be doing with myself. Probably making Youtube videos dubbing voices over my cats and pretending they’re wacky roommates in a 1980s sitcom. But see, that doesn’t sound as good as “I’d become a child psychologist” or “I’d manufacture wheelchairs for injured Olympic figure skaters.”

I guess what I’m saying is: I’m glad I can write, because I’m pretty sure I’d miss it.

1. Yes, I mean lying.

Posted on

Surly Questions: Michel Vaillancourt

To kick off Surly Questions for 2012, it’s my privilege to bring you an interview with Michel Vaillancourt, author of The Sauder Diaries: By Any Other Name. Thanks for the terrific interview, Michel!

1. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Hmmm.  Funny question that.

I knew I wanted to -write- around 12 – 14, which is when I was caught up with Anne MccAffery and Robert Heinlein.  I’ve had stories in my head ever since, which is why I was so heavily into table top role-playing games in my youth.  I still am, to a degree.

Want to be a -writer-?  Hmmm.  You know, I still don’t think I’ve made a conscious decision to “be a writer”.  I’m a storyteller at heart, and right now, instead of doing spoken word presentations, I’m writing them down and putting them out in eBooks.

Is writing The Big Calling In My Life, the way I know some writers feel it in theirs?  No.

2. Why steampunk?

Steampunk fascinates me on a few levels.  Something I heard Phil Foglio say at Steamcon was that “Steampunk fiction is about when technology can save humanity.  It isn’t the problem, it is the solution.”

I agree with that.  In my opinion, Steampunk fiction is inherently hopeful.  The right man (or woman) with the right perseverance and the right science at the right place could change the world for the better.  It is about people doing incredibly cool things at a point in time when when no one knew what the boundaries were and they seemed to be on the brink of revolutionizing the world.  Everything was within the realm of possibility; everything was within reach.  That’s pretty empowering.

3. What do you think sets the Sauder Diaries apart from other steampunk fantasy?

**chuckles** This is going to sound odd, but I really can’t comment, because I haven’t read much Steampunk fantasy/ fiction.

Having said that, I’ve tapped into something other than existing books for my creative process here.  I’m a fan of the overall Steampunk movement itself;  two trips to Steamcon in Seattle, spending time with the local Steampunk group in Halifax as I can, listening to the music, following folks on blogs and Twitter who are “living the scene” and such.

I guess what I have done is spent a lot of time researching the Steampunk community and tuning in on what themes seem to resonate within it by being part of the community.  This is a book for Steampunks, by a new member of the group. As opposed to being someone who wrote other stuff first and then that thought this might be a neat setting to try.

4. Any relation to Michel Vaillancourt, the Canadian show jumper born in Saint-Félix-de-Valois, Québec in 1954? Or is that just a coincidence?

Wow, you’ve done your research!  As far as I know, there is no direct relationship.  However, my family only really has its geneology traced as far as when we first arrived in what is now Quebec.  It’s possible that there is a connection on the France side of the trip.  If there is, I am unaware of it.

5. What songs are in your writing soundtrack?

My listening music tends to be based on my mood.  Sometimes, I just want quiet.  I either listen to Steampunk music from groups like Abney Park, Vernian Process and Vagabond Opera, or I listen to trance/ electronica from Tiesto or Armin Van Burren.  Other times, I listen to atmospherics like Brian Eno’s “Music For Airports” or “Music for Films”.

6. I’m told you have a strong military / technical / engineering background. What, if anything, has that brought to your writing?

Well, certainly, it has allowed me to add a level of detail that I might not otherwise have.  My father, for example, ran steam boiler systems on warships as an engineering officer… I spent a lot of nights as a kid sitting at the table watching him with a sliderule working on his training homework.  We’d talk about what he did and he’d explain to me how it all worked.

So, the part where Hans notes that it is possible for the metal of the boiler to catch fire and start burning unstoppably?  Yeah, that’s real.  Spray water onto it, and it burns -hotter-.  My dad has seen what’s left of boiler rooms where that has happened.

7. How big a role does reader feedback play in your writing process? What’s the biggest change you ever made because of something a reader said?

I have re-written entire chapters or moved chapters around based on reader feedback.  Originally, the “The Sauder Diaries – By Any Other Name” was released as episodic fiction, on Scribd, as each portion was written.  So as readers told me what they liked, I did more of that.

One of the most extreme examples is the scene at the lake between Hans and Annika.  That was re-written five times, based on my closed test reader group.

Another example is the good Doctor Koblinski. He was supposed to be essentially a one-scene character who was irrelevant to the long-term plot. His job was to be an authority figure (a medical doctor) that Hans would be able to believe in the face of what Captain Blackheart was telling him.

The fans, however, were enamored with him and insisted he had to stick around.  I had tremendous feedback at the release of Chapter One that everyone loved his wit and clear common-sense.  And again in Chapter two, when he got a bit more air time.  By Chapter 3, the Doctor was around to stay.

8. What’s the single best piece of writing advice you ever received?

“Shut up.  Don’t tell me about your story.  Go write it down.  If you tell me about it, you’ll be satisfied and you won’t need to do anything.”

Thank-you, Nick Jequier.

9. What has been the most rewarding thing about connecting with other writers through social media and the Internet in general?

A serious amount of “we know you can” gets traded around.  When it feels like I’m on Mission:Impossible, someone I know gets a break, a shot of good news, a great review, or something… they Tweet it, Facebook it, Blog it, whatever… and I get a shot of “whoo-hoo” that helps keep me moving.

So, I try to give back into the “Can Do” pool whenever I am able.

10. Who are the most inspirational people in your life when it comes to your writing?

Well, when I tripped over the works of Anne McCaffery and Robert Heinlein in my ‘tween years, they literally changed my world and got me writing.  I’d say they are my literary heroes.

I’ve been very fortunate to have Chantal Boudreau as a mentor in the process of getting from “story” to “novel”.  She has been wonderfully encouraging as well as open about her own experiences as an author and a trail breaker.  She’s the one that first really got it through to me that The Sauder Diaries was a publishable work.  She’s been there for me to talk to and compare experiences with whenever I just didn’t have answers or direction.

Another person that really got me where I am now was my grade 10 English teacher.  She flatly refused to accept anything but my best effort in my essays and compositions.  That’s carried over in anything I do in writing.  She also gave me a love of Shakespeare;  there is a nod to that and to her in the second book in the works.

11. How close is the second book of the Sauder Diaries to completion?

Another funny question.  It depends how you count it… “The Sauder Diaries – A Bloodier Rose” is currently at about 78300 words, with about two more chapters to write.  Because of the way I write — I edit as I go, because I hate leaving junk behind me — its pretty close to good.

However, it still needs my internal team’s two edits/ revisions before I even show it to my publisher and their editors for a two-pass edit.  My preference would be for mid-May to hit the virtual shelves.

12. What’s next after Sauder Diaries?

Well, as I have said elsewhere, that is partially going to be dictated by the fans.  I figure that after “A Bloodier Rose”, the world of “The Sauder Diaries” has at least four more complete stories in it that bear telling, if the fans want to hear them.

I’m also currently tinkering with a short story tentatively titled “After Three Degrees and One Percent”.  I’ve also got a SF story I’d like to do called “Marshal Station – The Dustpilots of Mars”, and a swords-sorcery called “Revenant”, but both of those are a ways away.

All of that said, one of those quotes that has always stuck with me was by Canadian singer Corey Hart.  During an interview, he made a comment to the effect that if a singer doesn’t have anything to say, they should shut up.  Hence a decade gap between his last two albums.

I sort of feel the same way about my writing.  Once the third “Sauder Diaries” is out, we’ll see if I feel like I still have something to say.

13. And now, the cliched question: your top five “desert island” books?

1.  SAS survival manual for desert islands
2.  “Space Chronicles” by Neil Degrasse Tyson
3.  “The Harper Hall of Pern” compilation by Anne McAffery
4.  “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” by Robert Heinlein
5.  A blank leather bound journal, like the ones my wife makes.  (I’d have to be able to write)

 

Posted on

Surly Questions: Angela Goff

Today’s post kicks off a series of interviews I have planned for the Surly Muse blog. Christening this new feature is fellow writer and founder of #WritingEmpire, Angela Goff. Thanks, Angela!

1. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Second grade was the turning point, when my teacher helped me assemble my first book, filled with the stories and poems I made up in class when I had finished my work early. It wasn’t a class project – she did it just for me. After such encouragement, and seeing my own work in a “real book”, I was smitten with a passion for writing. Thankfully, it’s been a lifelong malady.

2. What made you decide to start Anonymous Legacy?

My decision to abandon Facebook triggered that decision. I realized my best writing energy had siphoned off into witty status lines and photo comments. Then I read multiple blogs by editors, agents and published authors about how to establish a writer’s platform and/or “presence” online. Considering how the internet is integral in all industries now, I saw Anonymous Legacy as an investment, an ongoing resume for my future publisher – but one that had to be built gradually, over an extended period of time. That’s when I shut down my Facebook, set boundaries for myself in regards to texting and social internet time, and really got to work.

3. What was the inspiration behind the #WritingEmpire hashtag on Twitter?

I hear a lot of talk, in person and online, about how there is so much (insert favorite euphemism here) in books today. People enjoy trends and fun reads, but I hear more from writers – and readers – who wish to see new life breathed into the overall quality of fiction writing today. The #WritingEmpire mantra is, at heart, a reminder that if we want to see change in the books we read, then we are the ones who must go out and build it.

4. You have a daily presence on Twitter. What has been the most rewarding thing about connecting with other writers through social media?

O goodness. Where do I begin? Coming onto Twitter just before NaNoWriMo was bewildering – there were so many amazing writers that just came out of the woodwork. Nor were they snooty or overbearing, touting their own spiffy writing skills or stealing ideas. They were real. Transparent. They told on themselves. They smacked each other into line. They were there for each other when the frustration hit.

Moreover, I found these are not “fair weather writers” but people in the trenches for the long haul, wet feet and dysentery be hanged. NaNoWriMo is gone, and people are still having word sprints. Asking questions and getting answers. Needing encouragement and finding it. To find an online community of like-minded, dedicated writers who are willing to heckle or word-sprint with you at the drop of a hat (whatever it takes to get it done, y’know?) – that was an amazing blessing. Still is.

5. You’re a teacher as well as a writer. What lessons have your students taught you over the years?

When students – or any writing newbie, actually – ask you to read their work-in-progress, for heavens’ sake – TURN OFF YOUR INNER GRAMMAR TEACHER. Grammar, I’ve learned, is best left for someone else to criticize – or at least should not be a first step – when proofing a budding writer’s creative work. Go for the soul of their creative vision, and help them from there. The rest will fall into place.

6. What’s the best piece of writing advice you ever received?

That readers are like a cider jug – narrow necked, but capable of holding vast amounts of information. This has helped me tremendously in terms of pacing, and learning to drizzle in information so that my readers can swallow whatever complexities I serve them.

7. Who are the most inspirational people in your life when it comes to your writing?

My second, ninth, and twelfth grade English teachers were key. So were my parents (they still are), and my local writer’s group that has been meeting now for about three years. As for authors, the list is endless, but I would say my earliest and most long-reaching inspirations have been Lewis Carroll, C S Lewis and the Brothers Grimm.

8. I see from your web site that you have several projects in the works, including Castle 8. Can you tell us a little about it?

The Underground has been quarantined for centuries, running on the impersonal laws and mechanical system of a “big brother” tyranny that dissolved long ago. Crippled by earthquakes, mired in darkness, victimized by gangs, the Underground is on a path to self-destruction. But the Swackhammer brothers – math genius Greg, illiterate poet Errol, cannibal safe-cracker Finn and the illegally-born March – know there is something more beyond the Underground, that life hasn’t always been this way.

Severed from all history, literature, music and culture for so many generations, no one in the Underground has the least idea how to save, let alone rebuild, their world. The Swackhammers are thrown headlong into that mystery, as they scramble to escape the Underground and recover what was lost – at whatever cost to themselves.

9. Castle 8 seems to tie in your idea of “Anonymous Legacy.” What is the nature of the legacy the characters of Castle 8 must pass on, and how does it relate to your own “Anonymous Legacy”?

My characters must recover a legacy – one that was stolen away by earlier generations, leaving their descendants in perpetuated ignorance. Even those who think themselves in power only have access to fragments, and none in such quantity or coherence that they can easily reconstruct what came before. Whether the Swackhammers will recover that Anonymous Legacy is the journey I intend to present. As a history teacher, I consider these ideas – of recovering what was lost, to not forget your roots and know what has shaped your world – to be critical. We must all come to terms with our past. If we dismiss it, we do so at our own peril.

10. How close is it to completion?

I finished the first hard edit just last week, and plan to go back to it in mid-January. A couple more layers of edits and beta readers are needed before I begin the querying process, but I am certainly a matter of months from doing so – definitely before the next NaNoWriMo. Ideally? I would like to begin querying this summer. We shall see.

11. And now, the cliched question: your top five “desert island” books?

  • Bible
  • The Oxford Book of English Verse
  • Silverlock, by John Myers Myers
  • The Chronicles of Narnia, by C S Lewis
  • A blank journal for writing

A special education teacher by trade, Angela currently has multiple manuscripts in various stages of readiness, and plans to begin querying Castle 8 in the spring. Angela is also part of a close-knit writer’s group known as the Y5, which consistently plans out dignified meetings, only to have them devolve into food fights, hysterical laughter, and plans for world domination. In her spare time she meets with other aspiring authors at various coffeehouses, so as to encourage other kindred spirits while maintaining a quasi-respectable appearance to society. She can be found on Twitter as @Angela_Goff or at her blog: http://anonymouslegacy.blogspot.com/.

Posted on

How To Lose Readers and Alienate People

Photo by istolethetv on Flickr.

A few weeks ago, I received a free book of short stories from an indie author as part of a blog contest. The author of the book didn’t ask for a review, but I gave one anyway. My review, unfortunately, was not very positive. Neither was it scathing — I had a few issues with what I felt were grammatical problems and a couple minor structure issues. I rated it below-average, but was careful to say that I enjoyed the bulk of the short stories (which I did).

A few days ago, the author (whom I will not identify) emailed me to correct me on my criticisms. She told me that I’d mistaken her stylistic choices for grammatical errors and brought up her college pedigree. She implied I didn’t understand how fiction writing “worked” and made suppositions about my own grammatical predilections. According to her, I had undoubtedly expected a dry academic text and not living prose.

Finally, she informed me that the only low ratings she’d ever received on her work came from males, implying pretty clearly that my criticisms stemmed from my gender. To be fair, she did admit that perhaps her assumption was wrong, but let the implied accusation lie anyway.

This email bothered me. Not only because it made some pretty hurtful assumptions in response to a review I felt was both honest and fair — but because it left me very disappointed in the author herself.

I’m not writing this entry to get any cheerleading. I don’t need (or want) reassurance that I’m not sexist, or that the review was fair. That’s all entirely too subjective to determine sans context, and I have no intention of sharing the review or the subsequent correspondence.

Instead, I want to urge you, writers: do not do this.

Here’s the thing. I didn’t think the book was terrible. I didn’t tear it to pieces. I said it had some problems, rated it honestly, and thanked the author for the opportunity to read the book. Obviously, the author was under no obligation to like or agree with my review, but writing me to inform me that my criticisms were invalid, born of ignorance, and possibly sexist? That’s a different matter.

Not every book that an author turns out is a winner. Some of my favorite authors in the world have turned out volumes I think are turkeys. That doesn’t stop me from reading them. I would probably have continued to read this particular author’s work — in fact, I had one of her titles in my shopping cart, thinking I’d try it out and see if I liked it any better. But that email just guaranteed that not only will she never see another sale from me, but also that I’ll have nothing positive to say about her ever again.

Of course, that might not amount to much — I’m not going to name the author in question, because I have no interest in hurting her reputation. One or two lost sales isn’t a big deal, right?

But to me, this sort of behavior screams one word, loud and clear: Amateur.

Criticism is hard to take, especially if you feel it’s unfair or unwarranted. I look at some of the one-star reviews my favorite authors get, calling them everything short of Hitler himself, and I think about how difficult that must be to swallow — much less disregard.

But that’s kind of what you have to do, if you want to be a professional writer.

Accept that not everyone will love your work or think you’re a visionary. Accept that some people will think you’re pretty damn bad. A few may think you’re the worst thing ever. Fair or not, that’s how it is, especially on the Internet.

By sending this email, the author changed my perception of her permanently. I’ll never look on her work objectively again — assuming I read anything she writes in the future. I’m likely to think (true or not) that she’s only interested in positive reviews of her work. I find it nearly impossible to respect her as a writer, because she sure didn’t respect me as a reader.

Lastly, I fear this will probably have a chilling effect on the indie books I review in the future, as I’ll be disinclined to bring up any negatives for fear of some sort of retaliation. Would you want your readers to feel that way about you? I sure wouldn’t.

Fortunately, not every writer is like this. Only two weeks prior to this incident, I left a review of another author’s work on Goodreads that was pretty far from glowing. I liked the author and enjoyed the book well enough, but I thought it had some pretty significant issues. The author liked my review, told me it was more than fair, and asked if I’d be interested in “beta reading” her next installment. I happily agreed and am looking forward to working with her in the future.

One of these authors will be getting my money, and my positive recommendations, well into the future. The other will not. My ego’s not so large that I think this will make a vast difference either way — but as indie authors, our readers are all we’ve got, and I believe they should be treated with respect. And yeah, that includes me.

So the next time you get a less-than-favorable review and feel an urge to retaliate, ask yourself: is this really how you want to be seen? Do you really want to create an environment where the only readers whose opinions you value and trust are the ones who praise you unequivocally? Do you want to “correct” your critics by telling them they’re wrong to feel the way they do about their work?

Or do you want to be a professional?